1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to healthcare advertisements, and more specifically to an apparatus and method for effectively distributing revenues generated from delivering specific healthcare and non-healthcare advertisements over electronic medical record systems (EMR) and a regional healthcare information network (RHIN) using an electronic advertising server.
2. State of the Art
The current healthcare system is costly and inefficient. Adoption of electronic medical record systems is generally accepted as a means to increase efficiency, decrease duplication and decrease costs in healthcare delivery. A regional health information network is a collection of interconnected EMR systems that improves communication and transaction between healthcare providers (hospitals, physicians, etc.) and consumers. The current business model to sell EMR systems to physicians or other healthcare providers is based on the return on investment model. The overall cost of the EMR system is recouped by increased efficiency and effectiveness of the physician's practice using the EMR system over a period of time. A typical EMR business model consists of licensing the EMR software with or without hardware at an upfront cost and/or charging a yearly fee for software upgrades, maintenance and services. Additional services such as billing and proactive management are also often offered. All revenue streams are derived from licensing the software and providing services to the purchasing physicians. These EMR systems are prohibitively costly for physician and are the biggest barrier of EMR adoption by the healthcare industry.
Furthermore, healthcare advertisement often does not reach the target audience because HIPAA laws forbid the usage of protected personal health information from being used for marketing without the direct informed consent of the consumer party. Interested advertising parties usually seek to deliver their advertisement to a specific audience. For example, drug manufacturers of diabetic medication would wish to target patients who have diabetes as well as the health care providers treating these patients. Furthermore, it is well known that there are certain diseases that are statistically related to each other because of a causative effect, a similar underlying pathology or other biological reasons. For instance, people with diabetes may also develop vascular disease, heart disease, obesity, kidney disease, and/or chronic pain. Therefore, companies that market medications treating heart disease or obesity would benefit from targeting these diabetic patients and the healthcare providers caring for these diabetic patients and potentially prescribing these medications as well.
The current EMR model is not only costly to physicians and other healthcare providers but also does not provide an effective means to allow physicians and consumers to receive information and advertisements on drugs that are specific to the health condition in a manner that protects the patients privacy compliant with HIPAA laws.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for overcoming the foregoing deficiencies, and ensuring that consumers and physicians receive the appropriate healthcare information and advertisements on medication, medical device and healthcare services that are specific to their illness and/or treatment.